After reading Mika McKinnon‘s endorsement of this series on Twitter (example), I downloaded an audiobook copy of N.K. Jemisin’s first book in her “Broken Earth” trilogy, The Fifth Season. It is a fantasy novel with a healthy seasoning (ha! no pun intended) of science fiction. The story is set in a world called “Earth,” but … Read more
A solo hike in search of anticlines yields new outcrops and good views!
Snow may have cancelled the geology class, but there’s plenty to see outside! Join us for a tour of three fine examples of physical analogues in snow that show deformation akin to that we observe in rocks under tectonic stresses.
Today’s Friday fold comes to your eyeballs courtesy of my colleague Shelley Jaye, who took it in 1982: She found this in a glacial moraine adjacent to Lovlibreen Glacier, on the north shore of St. Jonsfjorden, Spitsbergen, Svalbard. Very cool disharmonic folding. Thanks for sharing, Shelley! Happy Friday to all.
Last week, I was in Morgantown, West Virginia, to deliver a colloquium talk to the geology department at West Virginia University of geological visualization. The next day, I took some time on the way home to geologize a bit on the road called Corridor H, a gorgeous transect through the eastern Allegheny Plateau and western … Read more
This fascinating new work by ornithologist Richard Prum re-examines sexual selection (mate choice) as a driving force of evolutionary change independent of (and sometimes in contradiction to) the mechanism of natural selection (environmental adaptation). Prum positions himself as a modern advocate for the ideas Charles Darwin expressed in The Descent of Man, and that Alfred … Read more
It’s Friday! Let’s head to Utah for a guest Friday fold photo – a river rat’s view of the Raplee Monocline!!
As noted previously, the old way of viewing gigapixel imagery is no more. But there is a new, better way. The GIGAmacro company has a better viewing platform that can be used either with images uploaded to their server or with pre-existing images that currently “live” at GigaPan.com. Here’s an example: a roadcut of limestone … Read more
The authors of this essential study are both scholars at Harvard University. They specialize in studying the decay of democratic governments and societies, one in century-ago Europe, and the other in half-century-ago years ago Latin America. They spell out the structure of authoritarian takeover across these different contexts, and then turn to our situation in … Read more
We return today to the scene of last week’s Friday fold, for it turns out that you can see some additional awesome folds from outer space (via Google Earth). Do not adjust your monitor: these patterns mean show up a stark and wavy reality!
Trevor Noah is a South African stand-up comedian who rocketed into American awareness when he was selected as the successor to Jon Stewart as the host of Comedy Central’s news program The Daily Show. This book is Noah’s autobiography of growing up in South Africa, at first under apartheid, and then in the new post-apartheid … Read more
The University of Maryland’s Jay Kaufman makes our Friday fold happen by sharing some images of folds from the Zerrissene turbidite system of northwestern Namibia.
The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness is the subtitle of this fascinating, extremely approachable book. Paraphrasing Thomas Nagle, it asks “What is it like to be an octopus?” The author is a philosopher by training, but he does a fantastic job as a science writer, too. Anecdotes about encounters with cephalopods … Read more
Some scaly Italian limestone shows off two foliations (S and C) which reveal the kinematic motions that built the Apennines.
In the epilogue to 11/22/63, Stephen King’s time-travel novel, he made an explicit point to laud Time and Again by Jack Finney as “the” time travel novel. I figured I should check it out. Here’s my report. This is a book that was written in the late 1960s, and feels like it. The writing is … Read more
This Friday, in search of a Friday fold, we head to Taiwan, not far from the epicenter of this week’s destructive earthquake(s).
A detailed examination of an elegant photo of the eastern front of California’s Sierra Nevada, from the perspective of the Alabama Hills. How many different geologic phenomena can be packed into a single image? Let’s find out!
Callan unveils a collection of 56 super-high-resolution images showcasing various principles of relative dating, aimed at a general education audience like undergraduate Historical Geology. He also offers a suggested lesson plan structure for instructors wishing to utilize the images.
I love the idea of high-resolution imagery that users can explore for geological meaning from the comfort of their computer screens, tablets, or phones. I think that 3D models and gigapixel-resolution panoramas (GigaPans) are powerful media for connecting people with the Earth. They allow improved access for many populations. Long-time readers will report that I … Read more
The subtitle of this useful and righteous book is How Science Got Women Wrong—and the New Research That’s Rewriting the Story. It’s a scientific examination of a slew of ideas about women, busting culturally-entrenched myths left and right with that most radical of substances: data. The book is intended, I would guess, as a comprehensive … Read more